no chance, no way (i won't say it)
by potahtopotato
Summary: Jily fluff! (Background Wolfstar).
1. Chapter 1

They were lost. Four hours, twenty unnecessary items in their shopping cart, and two bowls of spaghetti and meatballs after they'd walked into the IKEA, Lily finally had to admit defeat: she had no idea how to get out. She and her not-quite-fiancé-but-hopefully-would-be-soon would die here, and their skeletons would probably be picked over by some other opportunistic shoppers.

James didn't seem too bothered by this revelation. If Lily hadn't known better, she might have thought that he was glad to be trapped in this hell of furniture and household appliances.

"What do you think of this chair?" James asked, pointing at a blue and orange monstrosity. Lily pulled the cart over so she could better examine the... the chair. It appeared to be sentient, and malevolently so, if the stitching was anything to go by.

Lily shook her head. "I am not bringing that— that thing into my house."

"How about this one, then?" This armchair was even bigger than the last, made of leather, and bright red with orange spots.

Lily spared a glance at the nineteen year old man who apparently could not distinguish between Things That Should Exist and Things That Should Not.

"You know," she said, smiling, "it's lucky that Hogwarts had a uniform. I'm still not entirely sure how you manage to dress yourself in the morning."

James grinned at her. "You just have no taste at all. I bet Sirius would..." he trailed off, digging into his jacket pocket and pulling out a wallet, his wand, a chicken drumstick, and finally a slightly oily-with-chicken-grease mirror.

"Sirius Black," he said. A moment later, Sirius's face appeared on the other side, and Lily had to suppress a groan. She loved James's friends, she really did, but her boyfriend had apparently never heard of the concept of couple time.

"Can you believe that Lily doesn't like this armchair?" James was saying, pointing at the Red and Orange Horror.

Sirius gasped, and when Lily looked over he had put a hand over his mouth. "She doesn't like it? That armchair is the highlight of my life, the single ray of sunshine in my cold and dreary existence. If you don't buy it," he added as an afterthought, "I will."

James turned to Lily as though this proved everything. "See, Sirius likes it."

"The same Sirius who once walked around in one of those ugly Christmas candy cane patterned suits for a week straight because he thought it was funny?"

"How many Sirius Blacks do you know?"

They'd drawn a bit of a crowd by now, what with the magic mirror and the not-quite-yelling. Lily lowered her voice.

"I'm sorry to tell you, James, but his taste is just as terrible as yours."

James looked, if anything, indignant. "Well, he's the one who picked out your ring, so I hope his taste isn't that—"

He cut himself off and rubbed the back of his neck. "Er, I don't suppose you can forget I said that bit about the ring?"

Lily grinned and shook her head.

"Well."

Lily wasn't sure what she was expecting, but in retrospect it shouldn't have surprised her when James shrugged and reached into his other (similarity magically enhanced) pocket, took out a small box, and kneeled in front of her.

"Lily Evans," James said, "will you marry me?"

* * *

"I can't tell whether you two are super romantic or super dumb," Marlene Mckinnon said a day later, pouring herself more wine.

Lily laughed. "That basically describes my life. You should frame it and put it on our wall,"

"What, next to that ugly armchair you two bought yesterday?"

Lily shrugged. "It's not _that_ bad," she said, "and at least it goes with that carpet."


	2. Chapter 2

There are muffled sounds coming out of the broom closet. A boy moans, and James winces, seeing Lily do the same. They have a silent staring contest, and when Lily invariably wins, James mouths " _your turn next time_ ", clears his throat, and knocks on the door.

"Head Boy!" he says. "Open up!"

He hears a few thumps, some whispering, and a _Lumos_ as he tries not to imagine what could be happening only a few feet away from him.

Just as he steels himself to use _Alohomora_ , the door bangs open. in the doorway appear Sirius and Remus, both of whom are flushed and red-faced. Sirius's shirt is on backwards, James notices with a sort of horrified detachment, and he's wearing Remus's trousers.

James stumbles back, and Remus takes the opportunity to slip past him.

"I'll be in the library," Remus says. he looks as though he wants to add something, then blushes even redder and walks away quickly.

Sirius is still standing in the doorway, but he nods tersely and pushes past James on his way out. "I'll be not in the library."

James stands still for a moment, trying to process whatever the hell just happened. He hears a laugh behind him and whirls around, ready for another unpleasant surprise, but it's just Lily, about whom he had completely forgotten.

"You did know they were... together, right?" she asks.

James rolls his eyes, still a bit on edge. "Of course I know they're dating, I knew they were dating before they knew they were dating. That doesn't mean I want to imagine my two best mates shagging in a broom closet."

"No need to get defensive," Lily says. "I was just wondering, you do tend to be rather oblivious."

And James would have ignored that, but it's spoken with such bitterness that he raises his eyebrows instead.

"Something you want to tell me?" he asks, and Lily shakes her head quickly. He's not sure, but he thinks he can make out a blush in the near-darkness of the Hogwarts corridor. Before he can investigate, she starts walking again, and James has to hurry to catch up.

As they stroll through the halls, James wonders if it might be the tiniest bit depressing that the best part of his week is spending half the night awake, sending people in various states of undress to bed, and looking out for intruders. He decides that, since said time is spent with Lily Evans, there is much to be said for patrol duties.

They talk about nothing and everything; about Potions and Quidditch and what Marlene McKinnon did to that fifth year boy who tried to feel her up; about the war and the werewolf directory and how every day more Muggleborns leave Hogwarts to go who-knows-where. Occasionally James will notice when Lily opens her mouth to say something, then visibly changes her mind and makes a comment about the Ravenclaw Seeker instead.

James doesn't say anything because he's pretty sure that he knows what she wants to tell him anyway, and because if he's being honest he wants her to ask. He's never been asked out before, especially not by one of the prettiest girls in the school who he, incidentally, had the biggest crush on in fifth year.

"Are you going to Hogsmeade this weekend?" Lily asks on the tail end of a discussion about the idiocy of the Ministry specifying and regulating a standard cauldron thickness. They've arrived at the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, but neither of them wants to go in just yet.

James shrugs. "I think i'll go stag," he says, and then pauses to giggle to himself for a moment while Lily watches, confused.

"Right, well," she says after his laughter has died down. "I was... I was, um, wondering if..."

James decides that it's time to help this poor girl. "If you could hire my services as a prostitute? Yes, but it's ten Galleons an hour, extra if we go to Madam Puddifoot's."

It's clearly a joke (and a rather funny one at that, if James says so himself), but Lily's laugh sounds very forced indeed.

With a decisiveness that she's been lacking all night, Lily reaches for her purse, counts out twenty galleons, and hands them to a rather dumbstruck James.

"I'll give you the rest Saturday," she says. "Four hours and no Puddifoot's, meet me in the Great Hall at ten."

Then she ducks through the portrait hole and is gone, leaving James to wonder how many prostitutes, exactly, Lily has hired, but more importantly whether or not their date will actually involve his trousers on the floor.


	3. Chapter 3

Remus loves the library, he does. It's not just the books; he's not quite so lame that he would "make sweet, sweet love to Madam Pince", no matter what Sirius says, but is it so wrong that he can appreciate a bit of peace and quiet once in a while?

Today, though, Remus wishes that he were anywhere but here. He's wearing a ridiculous suit of Peter's that Peter had to owl home for, and it's been magically expanded so far that Remus is half-afraid that it'll fall around his ankles any second now. In his hand is a suitcase that he (very reluctantly) borrowed from his father, and there instead of his wand there's a pair of fake glasses up his sleeve.

In conclusion: he looks like someone's sad old uncle who thinks that not owning any cats and being male will prevent him from becoming a crazy cat lady while in reality all other crazy cat ladies look upon him with both awe and relief that at least they're not as far gone as he is.

Remus knows he needs to stop stalling, but standing here in the aisle and watching Lily and Marlene studying is far preferable to doing what he came here for.

A bet's a bet, Remus reminds himself, and walks out of the relative safety of the biography section and into the light. He crosses the room swiftly and sits down at Lily and Marlene's table without asking, which is pretty rude, but he needs to put this incident behind him as quickly as he can.

They look up from their books, Lily's mouth parting in a comical "o" while Marlene looks disbelieving that he has just handed her an hour of making fun of him with no apparent provocation.

Remus spares a moment of silence for his pride and plops the suitcase onto the table, opening it and beginning to remove papers from it. They continue to stare, so he pulls out the fake glasses (why oh why did he ever think that making friends with Sirius Black was a good idea?) and clears his throat.

"It has come to our attention here at Moony, Moony, and Fuck Off Padfoot I Did All the Work, that you, Lily Evans, have recently entered a romantic relationship with a certain James Potter. Do you confirm or deny this allegation?"

Marlene recovers first.

"So what bet did _you_ lose?" she asks.

Remus adjusts his fake glasses. "That happens to be confidential information, which I cannot reveal to you due to Article 7, Clause 16 of our contract, also known as Mind Your Own Bloody Business. However," he adds as Marlene looks ready to interrupt him, "I can tell you that I apparently have a terrible poker face."

He turns to Lily. "Please let's get this over with?"

"Sorry, what's happening? And why are you dressed like that?"

"Sirius wanted to make sure that you don't break poor James's heart," Remus says, "because you know that thing's about as fragile as his ego. But he was too scared of you to try to do the Don't You Dare Hurt Him Or Else routine, so we bet on a poker game and I lost, so here I am, and before you ask, yes the clothes were part of the deal. Contrary to popular opinion, I don't usually dress like this. Anyway, I've got a fifty-page legally binding contract that Sirius didn't even have the decency to help me write."

"Fifty pages?"

"The font is pretty big, you'll see."

"And I need to sign this if I want to go out with James?"

Remus nods. "Unfortunately."

Marlene tilts her head to the side, smirking a little. "Does James know about this?"

"I don't think so, judging by the fact that I appear to be alive and breathing. Now, if Lily here would be so kind as to start signing, we might actually be done with this before we've all gone old and gray and grown beards."

* * *

It takes forever to finish reading through and intialing the document. It's not exactly fifty pages; it is 51 and a half. By the time they're done, Lily is seriously reconsidering her decision to date James. It might've taken them months to stop dancing around each other, and the two times they went to Hogsmeade together have been great; but Lily, eyes swimming with legalese and hand cramping from holding a quill for so long, never wants to see another printed word again.

"And," Remus says, flipping the packet over as his voice breaks a little, "is the end of that. We are officially done."

Lily raises her head from where she's been lying, defeated, on the table. "Really?"

"Yep. Congratulations, you're now cleared to date him."

"I'm not so sure I want to anymore."

Remus laughs tiredly. "You better not, because if you put us through all this for nothing, I swear I'll jump off Gryffindor Tower, and you're coming with me."

"I thought that was the punishment for standing James up on a date?"

"No, no, you've got it all wrong, that's getting fed to a Blast-Ended Skrewt."

"Right, of course."

Remus yawns and gestures to Marlene. "You'd better wake her up," he says. "I'm going to finish my essay for Ancient Runes, I'll see you tomorrow. And, uh, please don't tell James about this; doing it was punishment enough for me."

Lily smiles at him and leans over to poke Marlene. "Noted. Goodnight, Remus."

"Night."

* * *

Back in the boys' dormitory, Remus collapses onto the bed, exhausted beyond all reason, and doesn't stir until an hour or so later, when James stumbles in and wonders why Remus is asleep at five in the afternoon on a Sunday.


End file.
